


Just a small world boy

by Munnin



Category: Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope
Genre: Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-18
Updated: 2018-08-18
Packaged: 2019-06-29 03:27:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15721029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Munnin/pseuds/Munnin
Summary: Luke had spent his life dreaming of seeing new worlds but the reality of Yavin IV takes time to get use to.





	Just a small world boy

Nothing in Luke’s life prepared him for Yavin IV. 

For the aggressiveness of the jungle – the way rebel ground crew had to burn back the vines every day just to keep the hanger clean enough to land. They traded horror stories about landing gears snagged by Yavin’s invasive greenery, showing off scars to scare the pilots into flying carefully. 

And then there was the tight and low entry over the canopy. Luke had flown the twists and turns of Begger’s Canyon most of his life, knowing every corner like the back of his hand. A mistake in the Canyon could be a hard lesson and one he’d had to learn more than once. But he almost failed his flight clearance on Yavin. There was something unnerving about coming on so close to the trees. There was so much life below him, hidden beneath the greenery. The jungle reverberated with the sounds of unfamiliar creatures in the night, creeping into Luke’s thoughts. He nearly clipped a wing the day of his last certification, sudden struck by the thought of something reaching up and grabbing his X-wing as he flew over.

Then there was the humidity, the constant moisture that hung in the air. Luke had never sweated so much in his life. His hair and clothes stuck to him, damp and uncomfortable. He felt so washed out and thirty all the time. The guilt at having to ask for more water, and being looked at funny when he did. He was use to rationing his water carefully and yet on Yavin, there was so much to go around. His astonishment on seeing the big communal showers, seeing people waste in minutes more water than his uncle would have harvested in a season. 

The thunderstorms that struck every afternoon like clockwork terrified Luke. Even the worst sandstorm he’d known was nothing like it. Sheets of water cascaded down the sides of the temple, forming walls of water that hid the view out of the hanger bay doors. The lighting exploding bright and sharp, leaving after-images every time Luke blinked. And the thunderclap shook the stones with such force he was sure they were being bombed the first time he felt it. 

And there were the weird extremes even within the old temple. The humidity around the hanger was always hot and humid and sticky. But the further into temples bowels there were strange hollows of cold, shocking in their sudden intensity. Like stepping into a Tatooine night but without the radiant warmth of sand and stone. A cold that left Luke shivering. He wouldn’t know that feeling again till the cave on Dagobah.

The hardest thing was the way everyone else took it in their stride, as if it was all perfectly ordinary. It made Luke feel small and young and stupid. Just another outer-rim hick who’d never been off his own dust-ball world before.

Biggs caught his arm on the way to a briefing, stopping Luke from slipping on one of the treacherous patches of the weird green moss. “It’s hard to get over, isn’t it? How wet it gets here.”

Luke chuckled and righted himself, grinning up at his friend in relief. “Glad I’m not the only one who finds it weird.”


End file.
